San Juan Capistrano Ca Celebrations

Somebody, quick, alert the swallows. In a break from a centuries-old tradition, Mission San Juan Capistrano will not officially welcome the return of the swallows on St. Joseph's Day, March 19. Instead, the 219-year-old mission will celebrate Swallows Day early, on March 16, a Saturday, to "allow more families to enjoy the festivities," Jerry Miller, the mission's administrator, said Thursday.

Listen to storyteller-juggler Izzi Tooinsky describe how he used to grocery shop in Africa, and triple coupons seem dull by comparison: "I'd be juggling on the beach, and the merchants would come and ask me to juggle at their booths," recalled Tooinsky, an Albanian immigrant who spent his late teens and early adulthood on the road, living everywhere from the slums of East Africa to an Israeli kibbutz and the streets of Paris.

Oh, those trendy Californians. Just when you think you've got your American music history down, they come up with Mexican Baroque and California Classical. * "We've all had a tendency to just deal with this kind of New World music and focus instead on the East Coast" and its Germanic and English traditions, said Alvin Brightbill, who leads a "Festival of Mission Music" Friday at Mission San Juan Capistrano Catholic Church.

A handful of main downtown streets will be closed Saturday for the annual Swallows Day parade. The closures will affect parts of Camino Capistrano, Ortega Highway and Del Obispo Street, as well as certain side streets. The parade is scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. and could last until 2:30 p.m. Camino Capistrano, from La Zanja Street to Avenida Golondrina, will be closed at 10 a.m. Part of the Ortega Highway, between Interstate 5 and Del Obispo Street, will also be closed at 10 a.m.

At 8:07 a.m. Sunday, tradition continued as the bells of Mission San Juan Capistrano clanged to signal the legendary return of the swallows from South America. About 200 people watched under gray skies as a nervous Michael Gastelum tugged on two ropes in a steady cadence for his first time as bell ringer to herald the annual sighting of the tiny birds, which only numbered one at the official moment. But it was enough to start celebrating. "There it is!"

Townspeople might be chuckling about it now, but no one was amused when it was first suggested that the Hairiest Man Contest was too good for the Swallows Inn, a venerable downtown honky tonk with a wooden floor and a wild past. The ruckus began earlier this month when a letter on San Juan Capistrano Fiesta Assn.

The Arabic chant calling Muslim followers to prayer on Saturday afternoon filled the courtyard of Mission San Juan Capistrano, founded more than two centuries ago to spread the Christian faith to California's Indians. A few hours earlier in the gym of the mission school, a rabbi and cantor in shawls presented a Sabbath service, reading from the Torah before a crowd that included Roman Catholic priests and the president of the Hare Krishna temple in Laguna Beach.

A city famous for its small, winged denizens will get a visit from the decidedly lesser known "land swallow" Saturday during the annual Follow the Swallow Run. For the first time, city organizers are encouraging entrants to dress up like swallows. The best-dressed swallows will win prizes. More than 1,500 runners are expected to enter the 10-kilometer event, which has separate categories for wheelchair entrants, and a shorter 4-kilometer course that encourages people to both walk and run.

Organizers estimated that 30,000 people turned out for the 36th Annual Swallows Day Parade on Saturday to watch as nearly 200 floats, bands, and equestrian units moved down Del Obispo Street. "The city offices were getting scads of calls in the last few days asking if we were going to cancel the parade," said Don Tryon, a parade organizer. "We told them it would happen, rain or shine. Luckily, it shined." One float, in particular, caught the crowd's attention.

Look, up in the sky, it's a bird. Not just an ordinary bird, mind you, but one of hundreds of cliff swallows making their annual 5,000-mile migration from Goya, Argentina, to Mission San Juan Capistrano. Despite an early morning rainfall, thousands of spectators visited the historic 218-year-old mission Saturday to catch a glimpse of the fleeting 5 1/2-inch birds, which were the stars of the St. Joseph's Day celebrations. The festivities began at 8:00 a.m.